KJ

renay asked me to share some favorite quotations.

This is tough, because I enjoy a good quote, but I don't tend to save them. In fact, when I want to quote something, I usually have go dig into my archives, or the Internet. This wasn't always true -- as a teenager, I started keeping a book of quotes, which I would write down in colored marker in a blank book that I purchased specifically for that purpose. Song lyrics, mostly, although prose and poetry quotations as well. A quick dig through some storage boxes turned up the book, and the vintage of the song lyrics would suggest that it was mostly written during college. Most of them unattributed; the lyrics I recognize for the most part, but others come from sources I can't remember. If only I had noted whom I heard say Backrubs and blood drives are evidence that there is a god on earth or A curious sense of unreality suffuses most parts of my life.

Given that the last quote in the book is a Barenaked Ladies lyric that was almost certainly meant to be a dig at my ex-boyfriend, I probably stopped writing them down sometime in 1998, which is just around the time that any famous quotation or song lyric I wanted would have become findable on the Web. And so I stopped keeping track. When I do save a quotation, it tend to be about words or books or language, like the three that live in my journal profile. I enjoy matching a quote to a situation -- going through that quote journal, I was pretty well able to guess what (or whom) I was thinking about when I wrote each one down -- which makes it harder for me to pull out a quotation when I'm not thinking about anything specific.

So here is one perennial favorite, a line of poetry I have long loved, and an appropriate way to sum up any personal entry:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

-- Walt Whitman, A Song of Myself

30 Days of... Project! Complete list of questions / Ask a question on LJ or on DW.

I shall now present
A post written in haiku
To honor Moose Day

Thanksgiving dinner
Turkey, stuffing, gravy, rolls
And two kinds of pie

For family time
A brother comes to visit
The other one calls

No time to plan tea
Tea shop found on random walk
Grand coincidence

House blend of Assam
Many others on display
Another next time

As darkness now falls
We read in bed, also websurf
Soon we will find food

So as Moose Day ends
I think on tea and on friends
And hope for both soon

I love/hate it when the next story rises up and demands to be written. This is usually how it happens: the first few lines of a story will present themselves, and then the next lines follow it, and then the bit after that. But not when I sit down to write, oh no. This happens in my head while I'm trying to do something else. Like, oh, trying to get ready to leave for work. And it takes over, and I don't want to do anything other than write. Which is damned inconvenient on a workday!

Ah well. I wouldn't really have it any other way. (Hence the "love" part of the equation.)

Seriously, though, I didn't even bother to choose a book to read today; I just made sure I had the blank notebook I recently bought specifically for fic. Got the first couple of paragraphs down on the train, wrote more at lunch, added a bit on the train ride home. Then transcribed it before I headed out for dinner. This is a story I've wanted to write for a while, but you know? I don't think it's quite going to be the story I was expecting. Hmm.

In other fic-related news, we had an open-mic poetry reading in the library today. (We host one each quarter.) Normally I read a classic -- Dorothy Parker, Shel Silverstein, etc. I almost chose "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" but then decided that I might not be able to get through that right now, so instead I ended up reading a de-fanfic'ed version of "Why". It was a little nerve-wracking, reading something aloud I had written myself, but it was nicely received. I guess I'm glad I did it. Still feel a little odd about it, though.

Although Moose Day is normally celebrated the day after Thanksgiving, the presence of anzubird and luvmoose necessitated an early observance. To that end, I threw a small tea at Lovejoy's this afternoon. The writing of haiku is a traditional part of this event, and I present our creations here.

( Moose Day haiku! )

Take equal parts T.S. Eliot and J.K. Rowling, add a dash of parody and a splash of homage, and you get this.

Warning: contains spoilers for Half-Blood Prince. Via The Laughing Librarian.